Posts Tagged: acquisition reform

FITARA holds great promise for federal technology procurement, including HR technology. By assuring the communication lines between HR and IT remain open, the odds of FITARA success at your agency will greatly improve.

Communication is key. Peter Drucker once said, “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” But sometimes, subtleties fail us, and in government, if we rely on hearing what isn’t said, we can get ourselves into major trouble. Chris Dorobek, host of the podcast DorobekINSIDER, recently interviewed Stan Soloway, President and CEO… Read more »

Photo by ActiveRain After weeks of reports about the debacle known as healthcare.gov (here and here), the latest news and actions around preventing the next IT boondoggle are now headed in the direction of reforming IT acquisition. Although President Obama got in on the action, I do not expect any significant reforms to take place,… Read more »

The July 2013 edition of Contract Management magazine, published by the National Contract Management Association (NCMA), included an encouraging article on how communications between government and industry not only can improve outcomes and business relationships, but also show positive results to improve requirements and the opportunities for better outcomes overall. The article, “MythBusting – Communications… Read more »

Last week, the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) conducted their inaugural 2013 Mythbusting Awards to three Federal agencies for their work in improving vendor communications in the acquisition process. The program also contained a forum on Mythbusting, in addition to breakout sessions on various MythBusters issues related to the previous memos… Read more »

According to recent guidance from Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, the initial round of Better Buying Power did not go well due to acquisition workforce personnel “creating” mandates from guidance on improving performance. One of the biggest areas of “confusion” from the original guidance was the preference for more fixed-price… Read more »

Since coming onboard as new Administrator of The Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP), Joe Jordan has seemingly looked to policy, regulations, and guidance on tactical execution to help solve the procurement woes that are being faced by the federal government. However, it has been some time since OFPP focused on what really is the… Read more »

Protests are back in the news, although they never really left. I have been writing about this issue for some time (here and here), but the problem has only exploded in the last five years with the economic implosion, and now sequestration and budgeting Armageddon possible on the horizon. A recent report from IBM’s Center… Read more »

The issue of subcontracts management is a badly needed topic that has gotten little attention recently, either through proposed legislation, or anywhere else. I attended the Acquisition Excellence 2012 Conference a few weeks ago, jointly sponsored by the American Council for Technology (ACT) – Industry Advisory Council (IAC) and the General Services Administration, discussing with… Read more »